No Trace Of Us In Spring
by WinButler
Summary: Six months ago, Ryou Bakura died. And he left a legacy of despair and pain behind him. As Bakura clings to life and the bars of Seto Kaiba's mansion, he contemplates exactly what he's lost. Yami no Bakura x Seto Kaiba, death, introspective. Oneshot.


No Trace Of Us In Spring

It was cold.

Naturally, it had been snowing. It was the dead of winter, after all. And the dead of _night. _The man reminded himself one last time why he was standing alone, on a dark street corner, in the middle of a cold December night.

He sniffed. Perhaps he was catching cold. This was the disadvantage of having one's own body. One becomes susceptible to all sorts of nasty illnesses. For example, hypothermia. For another, a broken heart.

Crunch. Yes, that was the sound of faded sneakers stepping on fresh white snow, and even as the man (_boy, _he felt no more than a fucking _boy_) took the steps he thought of how goddamn cliché the sound was, and how depressed that made him feel. No. Angry. He did not get depressed. He was not a mere mortal.

He also thought of how the fresh white snow, newly fallen on this shitty winter's day was an insult, an insult to the memory of that person. This snow was a pathetic substitute for the clear, porcelain pallor of his face, the ivory perfection of his hair.

_There was a time when everything we did seemed free._

Bakura sighed and sat. He knew he was going to get wet, so it was a damn good thing he was fairly sure he couldn't feel anymore.

Six months ago, Ryou Bakura had died. The victim of a tragic car accident, the papers had said. An extremely bright young boy, seemingly destined for success.

Fuck that. As if they could truly understand what he had lost. Not a friend, not a boyfriend, none of that shit, but someone who had been there forever. And ever. Someone to carry Bakura home when he passed out at the underpass. Someone to make sure Bakura remembered to eat. Someone to clean up when Bakura came home covered in blood and had no idea why. Someone to pacify Seto Kaiba when his expensive laptop somehow ended up at the Bakura household.

Oh yeah. Don't even fucking _talk _to me about that guy.

_And all in all, I guess it's for the better if you just can't feel a fucking thing. _

The funeral had been different. Not entertaining, like they normally were for Bakura. He was sure, absolutely one hundred percent sure that he hadn't loved Ryou. Seriously. It was not like that. Bakura had, according to everyone he's ever met, a black, charred lump of coal where his heart should be. Yeah.

But that was a lie. Because a person was immortal they had no heart? That was pretty illogical. Kaiba disapproved of poor logic. But we're not FUCKING THINKING ABOUT SETO KAIBA!

Bakura was screaming inside his head. Never had he so much wished that he was mortal and could die. He just wanted to speak to Ryou again. Not to do anything stupid like kiss him and proclaim his undying (dying, ha) love for him, because that was bullshit, and all, but just to talk to him. He really wished that Ryou were there to reprimand him for sitting in the snow, getting Ryou's favourite jeans and sweater really wet and "gross!" as Ryou would have put it.

Ryou could tell Bakura, who would be ignoring him, about his day at school. Bakura would tell an extremely agitated Ryou how many people he had set on fire that day.

Bakura would tease Ryou about his crush on Malik Ishtar. Ryou would yell at Bakura upon finding a dead rat in the sink. Bakura would not hear him deny the crush, and that hole in his chest would appear again.

Bakura sighed again. He leant against the cold, metal railings of the outskirts of the mansion, and wonder if he was meant for existence in this world. If he ever had been.

Most of all, he wanted to ask Ryou what the hell was going on with his stupid fucking feelings. Why, when Ryou had died, and Bakura had shattered, Seto Kaiba had tried so damn hard to pick up the pieces, even though Bakura had resisted every step of the way. Maybe Ryou would be able to tell Bakura why that hole in his chest now appeared every time he thought of that arrogant prick, every time he heard his voice, every time his arms wrapped around Bakura as if he needed _protecting. _

OK, so maybe this wasn't about Ryou anymore. Maybe he just needed someone who might qualify as a friend. And now that Ryou was gone there were none of those left.

He could try to talk to Seto (_Kaiba, _that was his name, not Seto, never Seto) about it, but Kaiba would just try to figure out what was wrong, and always, always get it completely wrong. Kaiba thought it was about Ryou. It wasn't. It was about him.

Bakura lay down. He wondered with a grin whether his face would be frozen in place if he ever woke up again. He grinned even more when he thought about Seto Kaiba waking up to a good-as-dead body outside his precious mansion.

He missed Ryou.

_And I wanted you to know it was you that we were thinking of as we quietly died in the snow._

fin.

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Win says: This was random. It's the sort of thing I'd want to do as a chaptered fic, but it would never in a million years get finished, so I just one-shot-ed it.

By the way, the italics are lyrics from Alk3's _Donner Party. _The weird thing is, they go strangely well with the theme of this fic, and I didn't even have it in mind when I wrote it.

I'm not sure how to characterise this particular brainchild. I think I was going for existentialist angst. I think what I ended up with is Bakura being emo. That's a damn shame.


End file.
